


Stumbling in the Dark

by Evidence



Series: NatM Soulmate AU's [3]
Category: Night at the Museum (2006 2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 21:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3624171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evidence/pseuds/Evidence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahkmenrah’s existence explains everything, and also doesn’t make any sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stumbling in the Dark

 

 

Ahkmenrah’s existence explains everything, and also doesn’t make any sense.

Larry doesn’t get it. He really doesn’t. Why is _his_ _soulmate_ an ancient Egyptian pharaoh? Why is he… just… _why?_ Of all the people that God or the universe or fate or magic or whatever could have seen fit to match up with Ahkmenrah, why would anyone ever pick him?

It’s not that he’s suffering from self-esteem issues or anything, here. He’s always hoped that he’s destined for big things. Just, he kind of figured those big things would be more entrepreneurial in nature. Romance-wise he’s managed to screw up every relationship he’s ever had. Even Erica, who has the patience of a saint and maturity enough for ten of him, had eventually given up. So wrapping his head around Ahkemrah, who is pretty much a perfect ten in every category from looks to brains to… to _everything_ , let’s be real here, is… difficult.

Seriously. It’s getting kind of awkward at this point. Larry just finds himself staring, a lot, while his brain makes the equivalent of an empty dial tone noise. He kind of feels like he should apologize. Like, ‘hey, listen, you’re an eternally young, ancient king who’s probably used to having the best of everything, so, sorry about this whole deal with the middle-aged divorcee from Brooklyn for a soulmate and all’.

“Larry.” Ahkmenrah snaps his fingers, once, right in front of his face, and he blinks.

“Was I spacing out?” he asks.

The pharaoh nods.

“Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat and averting his gaze.

But Ahkmenrah only shrugs.

“I find it flattering,” he declares. Then he nods towards his belt. “The monkey took your keys again.”

“What? Dammit,” Larry swears, flustered, and pretends he’s leaving to chase after Dexter and not escape from his own embarrassment.

~

Ahkmenrah has seen Names cross his flesh before, but this is the first time he’s ever actually met the owner of one.

He can’t help but feel like he might be doing something wrong.

The other five names all came and went while he was trapped in his tomb, with only his parents for company. All five were in languages he did not recognize. The first one lasted for a little over forty years. He remembers the knot of anxiety in his stomach, the dread which grew as days turned to months, months turned to years, and then on into decades, and he knew that somewhere out there, someone he was destined for was living a life without him.

He had wondered if they bore his name, also. If they were waiting for him. At first he prayed that they were, and then, as the reality of his situation settled in, he prayed that they weren’t.

When it faded, he hid himself away, and wept.

His parents never knew. In the dark of the tomb, it was easy to hide such things. They had one another. They bore each other’s names, and shared each other’s fates. They would not understand his loneliness, and so he could not bring himself to try and share his despair with them.

It was the same for the others. In a way, he is almost grateful that he could not see Larry’s name appear on him while he was trapped inside his sarcophagus. With the first two names, he dreamed of meeting his soulmate, of what he would say, what they might be like, how they might find one another. But time had dimmed such hopes, and the other three had felt more like mockeries, as if the gods were taunting him with only the faintest glimpse of what he would never have.

He is glad that his knowledge of Larry is tainted by no such bitterness.

Yet, there remains a tight knot of fear that almost paralyzes him in his presence. Larry is everything Ahkmenrah could ask for – brave, handsome, noble, kind, intelligent, creative. Good-humoured. Charming. Liable to make his father break out in a cold sweat if he ever knew about him. He is unquestionably the best thing to happen to him in many, many years.

Something is going to ruin it.

Something always does.

~

“So,” Larry says, staring at his flashlight like it holds the secrets of the universe. “This, uh, this whole ‘soulmate’ deal…”

Ahkmenrah nods sort of encouragingly at him.

“Yes?” he says, and Larry can’t tell if that tone is hopeful or just polite.

He takes in a deep breath, lets it out again, counts to ten. Clears his throat.

“So normally I would ask you on a date or something, but I’m not sure how we would do that? I mean, I have to work, obviously, and you can’t leave the museum during my off hours, because you’re, well, not… able to, so a real date’s kind of off the table, but there’s a television in the security office and I could always bring a movie and we could maybe… do that?”

“A movie?” Ahkmenrah asks, his brow furrowing.

“Yeah. It’s like, um, a play, but recorded onto… you know what? Why don’t I just show you. Tomorrow night?” he suggests.

Ahkmenrah tilts his head, and taps his index fingers against one another. His gaze seems to see straight through Larry, and also possibly the wall behind Larry.

“Is this a courting ritual?” he asks.

“Well, I guess just watching a movie doesn’t have to mean anything, it could just… but, um… yes. Yes it is.”

He swallows.

Ahkmenrah smiles at him.

“Then I accept,” he declares. “Tomorrow night, we shall watch this ‘movie’ of yours together.”

“Great! Awesome!” Larry says, gesturing awkwardly with his flashlight and nearly stumbling into the wall behind him. “I’ll try and find a good one!”

~

Larry shows him many things.

Movies and music, cameras and phones and bright, glossy photographs, and other wonders, made all the more wondrous for the lack of magic in their functionality. It is so much that Ahkmenrah sometimes has difficulty separating his concept of the man himself from the times he lives in. After so many years of depravation and darkness, he drowns in light.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that Larry should carry his own light with him – an electronic torch that brightens and dims with a snap of his fingers.

“I invented this thing once, called the ‘snapper’,” Larry tells him. “Not that it matters, it didn’t turn out, but… I always dreamed I would just have one idea someday that would be my big break.”

“Break?” Ahkmenrah wonders. “A break from what?”

Larry laughs.

“No, like… ‘breakthrough’, I guess,” he clarifies. “One idea that would make me rich and famous and solve all of my problems.”

“Ah. I see.”

They sit in companionable silence, for a moment, while the screen begins to play the Indiana Jones movie. It is a favourite of Nicky’s, apparently, and the tenth film which Larry has brought.

Neither of them are expecting it when the lights and television abruptly go out, plummeting them into darkness. Ahkmenrah goes still in shock, and Larry curses.

“Power’s out,” he says.

“Why?” Ahkmenrah blurts out, more unnerved than he means to let on. It is early, yet, and the night has just begun, and he has had no opportunity to prepare himself for the inevitable darkness of his sarcophagus. To have this suddenly thrust upon him is… unpleasant.

“I don’t know. It’s probably just a hiccup in the system, unless someone’s gone and messed with something they’re not supposed to – in which case, they’re in big trouble,” Larry says. “In the meantime, where the heck did my flashlight get to?”

The tablet can make light, but Ahkmenrah had left it back in his exhibit, as he most often did. He regrets it, now. Without the cheery glow of the television screen, the security office feels smaller than it should. He tries to focus on the sound of Larry rifling through the items on his desk instead. There is plenty of space, he reminds himself. Space enough for him to reach his arms and legs out, to turn around, to hold his hands above his head.

“I swear, the dumbest thing about flashlights is that you can’t actually _find_ them in the dark…” Larry mutters, and then he makes a noise of triumph, and with a snap, there is light again.

“Got it,” he says. His expression of triumph falters somewhat when he looks over. “Ahk? You okay?”

Ahkmenrah forces himself to smile.

“I’m fine,” he replies. “Just startled. Perhaps we should discover who has stolen our electricity away?”

“Sure,” Larry says, though he doesn’t look wholly convinced. “Wait, hang on, I think I’ve got a second flashlight in the… yup, here it is. Probably should have grabbed this one first, now that I’m thinking about it. Why don’t you take this one?”

Ahkmenrah blinks, and before he can reply, a sturdy plastic handle is being pressed into his palm. Larry depresses the switch to turn it on, and he accidentally shines it into his own eyes before moving it down and away, blinking back spots.

“Yeah, uh, I don’t recommend staring straight into it,” Larry says.

“That was accidental,” Ahkmenrah informs him, perhaps just a touch defensively. But there’s light, now, and then Larry opens the door out into the wide, open hall, which is even better, so any irritation he might feel is impossible to hold onto. The museum is filled with sounds of confusion and voices calling, the unmistakable rumble of something either falling over or crashing into a wall. It is filled with _life_ and with _people_ , and moonlight streaming in through the front windows.

“Okay, everyone!” Larry calls out, as they walk. “Please remain calm, and try to stay where you are! _Do not light any fires!_ We’re going to go try and see why the back-up generator hasn’t kicked in yet…”

Larry falls into the role which duty demands of him with ease, and Ahkmenrah allows himself to watch, for a moment, before recovering the last of his nerve for himself. He has survived the darkness, he reminds himself.

His grip around the flashlight tightens.

~

It starts with Larry thinking to himself that he should maybe get Rexy a different bone to chase.

He can’t help but worry that one day someone in the museum is going to find suspicious teeth marks on that rib or something, and he already has to field enough awkward questions as it is.

So. He designs a giant dog bone, for the giantest, boniest dog he knows.

It takes him a little while to perfect the model. The first few prototypes get torn to shreds in a matter of minutes. The trick is making something that will last no matter how hard Rexy puts his teeth to it, but that also won’t damage said teeth either, or leave behind any marks or toxins or anything else that would probably be bad for a fossil. At the end of it, he has an over-sized, durable dog toy that Rexy absolutely _adores._

He keeps it in the security office, at first, but McPhee starts making noises about the clutter, so after a while he just starts taking it back and forth from his apartment with him. It earns him a few curious looks on the subway.

“What’s that?” one lady asks him a few weeks into it.

“Giant dog bone,” he replies, a little distracted. Dexter had stolen his keys again and let the Mayans out. He’s still trying to figure out how to communicate effectively with those guys, and his mind keeps moving back and forth between that issue and how to keep a monkey from perpetually robbing him. It’s harder than it seems. Every time Larry ups his game, so does the monkey. Like a sort of key-stealing arms race.

“They make them that big?” the lady asks. “Where’d you get it?”

“I, uh, I made it myself,” he admits.

“Oh, figures,” she groans. “I’ve been looking all over, and I can never find something that my dog doesn’t take apart in two minutes flat. She’s a Great Dane. Chew toys don’t last half a second against her chompers.”

Larry blinks, and somehow that train ride ends with a person he’s just met commissioning him to make her a giant dog bone.

A month after that, he’s selling them online, getting orders faster than he can fill them out.

~

Initially, Ahkmenrah had been grateful for the somewhat… sedate nature of their courtship. He had a lot to adjust to, and Larry had his responsibilities as a night guard to handle, and too much, too quickly, would have suited neither of them, in his estimation. But it has been months, now, and gratitude is beginning to sour into uneasy suspicion.

He is not a bad looking man, by any means.

But he is also a reanimated corpse.

Perhaps it is unsettling to contemplate physical intimacy with a body which turns to mummified remains every morning. A body which may, indeed, be less living than it seems even at night. He can’t pretend to have any certainty on the subject. Though Teddy looks every inch a living man when the tablet animates him, he is still wax inside. For all Ahkemrah knows, beneath the surface of his skin, his veins are dust, and his heartbeat is more illusion than muscle. Everything _seems_ to work as it should, but what is flesh restored by magic and what is magic imitating flesh is another question entirely.

One evening, he finds a discarded miniature Roman sword, and intentionally pricks his finger with it. It is not an experiment he has even made before.

There is no blood.

How disquieting.

“What are you doing?” Larry asks him, and then sees the tiny sword. “Oh. That must belong to one of Octavius’ men.”

Ahkmenrah inclines his head in agreement.

“I’ll return it to the Roman display,” he offers.

“Are you okay?” Larry asks. “Only, you seem a little… subdued, lately.”

It is on the tip of his tongue to voice his thoughts. To ask for some clarity on this subject, so that at least he might be able to put the question behind him, regardless of the answer. But the prospect of having his fears confirmed makes the words feel too heavy to push forward. Later. He will ask later, when he has prepared himself for the possibility of seeing disgust in Larry’s eyes.

“I’m fine. Just lost in thought,” he says, instead.

~

Larry is screwing this up.

This whole thing with Ahkmenrah. He _knows_ he’s screwing it up, although he doesn’t know _how_ he’s screwing it up.

Okay, well, that’s not entirely true. He thinks maybe the fact that they haven’t really broached the whole ‘soulmate’ subject since the first movie night probably has something to do with it. And probably also the way he freezes up like an exhibit at sunrise every time he contemplates actually making some kind of move.

It’s just, if nothing else he’s pretty sure that Ahkmenrah hasn’t seen a lot of action for the last fifty years he’s spent locked in a box. Part of Larry would love nothing more than to personally end that dry spell for him. But most of him is locked up over concern that he’s going to screw it up, even while he acknowledges that worrying about screwing it up is probably screwing it up more than anything else right now. It’s just, how do you even go about kissing an incredibly gorgeous pharaoh? Do you ask permission first? Do you just dive right in there? How did ancient Egyptians feel about slipping someone some tongue? None of the websites he’s poured through have been very helpful on that subject. And that’s without even going into the particulars of whether or not a reanimated mummy even has _those_ kinds of urges anymore. He’s almost worked up the nerve to delicately ask Teddy and Sacagawea about the… dynamics, of their own relationship, but even then, they’re wax and polyurethane, respectively. What works or doesn’t work for them might be irrelevant where Ahkmenrah is concerned.

It’s easier to just kind of ignore it and keep on going as they have been, really. Normally he’s more of a jump-right-in, two-feet-first kind of a guy, but Ahkmenrah is way more terrifying than any other venture he’s ever contemplated.

Besides. He’s got a lot of giant dog bones to make.

~

Ahkmenrah is a pharaoh, a king of kings, and he has nothing to offer.

Not to a man like Larry Daley. Not anymore.

“Come on,” Larry says. “Don’t look at me like that. Just ‘cause I don’t work here anymore doesn’t mean I won’t visit. I’ll visit tons! I even worked it out with McPhee, I’m gonna come back every weekend, at least, to make sure the alarms are functioning alright. But this could be my _big break!_ ”

“Sounds mighty dull to me,” Jedediah grumbles, from his place atop the front desk.

“I’m afraid I must agree, Lawrence,” Teddy says. “Are you really certain about this?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to spend every night with you guys,” Larry says. “But I have to think about other stuff, too. With this venture, I can make so much money. I can afford to donate some to the museum. I can afford to save up for Nicky’s college tuition. I love it here, but the night guard salary isn’t exactly _high_ , you know?”

Once upon a time, Ahkmenrah could have drowned him in riches. He could have hired the finest tutors in the world for Larry’s son. He could have had the best priests teach him magic, the most accomplished warriors train him in combat, the most skilled musicians and artists train him in any craft he desired. But now, he can only stand and watch as Larry slips through his fingers. Like sand. Or dust.

“I’ll still see you all,” Larry insists.

Wordlessly, Ahkmenrah turns, and heads back to his tomb.

~

Larry’s got it all planned out – he’s going to take Ahkmenrah on a date. A real, honest to god date, with dinner and a movie in an actual movie theater, and maybe do some light, modern world sight-seeing if there’s time for it afterwards.

And then, at the end of that, he’ll kiss him. And then they’ll go from there, depending on what kind of reaction this all gets and whether or not he has to make any apologies.

That’s the plan.

Only, there’s a slight issue, in that no one can actually seem to _find_ Ahkmenrah any time he goes back to the museum. If he sees him at all, he always seems to vanish again before Larry can catch up to him.

“Teddy,” he finally cracks, a full two months into working with his new company. “Where the heck is he?”

“I’m not a man who likes to be conflicted in my loyalties, Lawrence,” Teddy tells him. “He’s the master of the tablet, and he’s asked us not to tell you. For the sake of our friendship, I hope you can respect the position I’m in, and why I can’t answer that question.”

Well that’s… slightly soul-crushing. He’d sort of guessed that Ahkmenrah was avoiding him on purpose, but having it spelled out like that is surprisingly painful.

“But why is he avoiding me?” he wonders.

Teddy gives him the look he normally reserves for the nights when Dexter outwits him.

“Son,” he says, and then stops, and shakes his head. “You’ll figure it out.”

“Helpful. Thanks."

~

Ahkmenrah is being childish, shying away from potential hurts and unwanted situations like the boy he stopped being the day he became a king.

It’s undignified. But why shouldn’t he be undignified? What does it matter anymore? No kingdom relies upon him, or his strength. The gods may see, and disapprove, but if that is the case then they are welcome to take the matter up with him themselves. His parents would be appalled, but they are not here. He no longer knows where they are, in fact.

The integrity of the tablet matters more than the integrity of his character.

He shudders, slightly. The thought reminds him of his brother. It’s like a jolt of cold water, and it wakes up some of his shame.

The others have told him of Larry’s search for him, of his obvious distress. He has no desire to cause Larry distress. Quite the opposite. And if he wishes to see him only to… formally end their courtship, soul marks or no, than that would hardly change matters more from what they already are.

He has resolved to meet Larry the next night he visits when he wakes to find the man himself standing in front of his sarcophagus.

“Good evening, Larry,” he greets.

“Good evening?” Larry parrots. “That’s it? You’ve been avoiding me for months, and the first thing you say is ‘good evening’?”

He frowns, pulling himself up onto the rim of his sarcophagus, and beginning the tedious work of unwrapping his bandages.

“What should I say, then?” he snaps. He doesn’t mean to snap. But it comes out sharp anyway, carrying a spark of resentment he hadn’t even realized was there.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe we could start with why you’ve been _avoiding me!_ ” Larry snaps back.

“I don’t appreciate being ambushed,” he declares. His guards are beginning to look a bit twitchy at the angry tones of voice in the chamber. He tries to force himself to calm down.

“Well, I don’t appreciate having to ambush you, but here we are,” Larry replies.

Ahkmenrah resists the urge to throw a wad of bandages at his head.

“I don’t see why you’re upset about it. You seem perfectly content to spend your time elsewhere, lately,” he says instead, careful and cool, as collected as he can be under the circumstances. “Perhaps you miss the thrill of having royalty at your beck and call?”

“What?” Larry snaps. “That doesn’t even make any sense. Is this about me leaving my job?”

Ahkmenrah silently gets up to retrieve his regalia.

“Look, I explained, I didn’t leave because I don’t want to be here, I left because it was a good opportunity for me! It’s not – it wasn’t about you!”

“Oh, I am very aware of how little I factored into your decision,” he says, dressing with slightly more aggression that usual. Larry, even upset, still turns to put his back towards him, as if the sight of Ahkmenrah’s uncovered skin offends him.

“That’s not… no,” Larry says. “I didn’t do this so that I could spend less time with you, I did this – well, partly, I did this – so that we could actually do more things together. I mean, without me having to work all the time and look after everybody instead of just… taking you places.”

“Where would I go?” Ahkmenrah asks, closing his eyes for a moment as he bites back at his anger. He breathes deeply through his nose. “This is where I belong.”

“As long as you get back before morning…” Larry starts, turning back around. They lock gazes, however, and the rest of his protestation dies on his lips.

“That’s not what I mean,” he says, forcing a tight smile onto his face. “It’s alright, Larry. I’m dead. You’re not. And I have no desire to hold your pursuit of life against you.”

With a sharp nod, he leaves the former night guard standing helplessly in the middle of the room.

~

_I’m dead. You’re not. And I have no desire to hold your pursuit of life against you._

What the heck does that even _mean_?

~

Ahkmenrah discovers Octavius taking tiny sips from a gigantic cup of wine.

He has no idea where it’s come from.

The little Roman general blinks drunkenly up at him.

“You look like you could use some of this, too,” he slurs, patting the side of the cup in offering.

“Yes,” Ahkmenrah agrees, and takes a much larger sip of his own.

~

Amelia kisses him and tells him that she knows what she is, and what the sunrise will bring for her.

It’s funny. All the things Larry has invented, or tried to invent, and this is the most visceral ‘lightbulb’ moment of his life. He swears he can _feel_ Ahkmenrah’s name rewriting it itself around his bicep as the tablet does its stuff, and all he can think is _oh._

_He was trying to let me go._

He watches Amelia fly away, and finally understands what he has to do. It’s… strangely liberating, this realization. He always thought he was freer than most people, eschewing the rat race in favour of pursuing his own personal dreams and ambitions, refusing to let go of his ideal of being an inventor. But maybe instead, he’d just chained himself to a different track in the same maze.

If there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be, and nothing he’d rather spend his life doing, then why go somewhere else and do something else when no one’s holding a gun to his head and forcing him to?

He turns and makes his way into the museum.

“Larry!” Teddy calls.

“In a minute, Teddy!” he calls back, heading straight for the tomb as everyone else hustles into the basement. He makes the trip in record time, to find that Ahkmenrah is still in the process of using the internal lever system he installed to climb out. It’s pretty obvious he’s a little confused. No one’s put the tablet back in its place yet.

“Larry?” he says. “What’s happened?”

Larry comes to a halt in front of the sarcophagus. There are gouge marks in his flashlight, from where Kahmunrah’s blades hit it. He feels almost tempted to present it, like some kind of old fashioned knight holding out his sword to a king. After a moment, he decides to go with it, and holds it out in front of himself.

“Dexter stole the tablet and took it to the Smithsonian with the others. Your brother, Kahmunrah, was there. He wanted to summon an army to take over everything. I fought him and shoved him through the doorway to the underworld, because he really had it coming to him. Then I got Amelia Earhart to fly everyone back here in her plane. In the morning, I’m going to sell my company, and make a donation to the museum to try and convince them not to change the exhibits. And then I’m going to ask for my old job back,” he says. His heart’s pounding in his chest, and his mouth is dry, but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt conviction so strongly before. “I don’t want to be anywhere else. I don’t want to be _with_ anyone else. I don’t care if you’ve been dead for thousands of years, I’m only afraid that I won’t be good enough to deserve you.”

Ahkmenrah blinks.

“Come again?”

Larry huffs.

“Do you really need me to repeat that whole thing?” he asks.

“It’s very early for me, Larry, and I’m not sure I’ve understood you correctly,” the pharaoh says.

“I _love you_ , okay?” he blurts.

Maybe a little too loudly.

It actually kind of seems to echo, a bit. And the jackal guards by the entrance crane their heads to peer in at them.

“Hi, yup, yes, I did indeed just shout that,” Larry tells them, waving awkwardly and putting his flashlight back in his belt.

When he looks back, Ahkmenrah is on his feet, and walking towards him.

“I cannot offer you anything,” he says, sounding very wistful and sad about it. “Not wealth, not lands, not comfort or luxury.”

“I don’t want a bunch of stuff,” Larry tells him.

“You want success and financial security for your son’s future,” Ahkmenrah points out.

“Okay, yes, but you don’t have to give me those things. Nicky’s mom and his stepdad are both loaded anyway. If anything, he’s kind of spoiled at this point,” Larry says. “All I want from you, is you. I’ve missed you.”

He takes a step forward, and carefully brushes his hand against Ahkmenrah’s cheek, ready to retract his touch at the first sign that it’s unwelcome. Ahkmenrah stills, but his eyes dart across Larry’s own face, as if he’s also looking for some sign of rejection. Which is kind of weird, considering Larry is pretty much doing the exact opposite of rejecting him right now.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks.

Ahkmenrah leans forward and catches his lips in answer. It’s very tentative, at first, and Larry can’t actually figure out who’s being more skittish, but then they’ve got their arms around each other and apparently at least one ancient Egyptian doesn’t object to some tongue, and at some point Larry ends up with his back to the wall and his fists full of bandages while Ahkmenrah attacks his neck with his mouth.

“We should probably, uh, probably slow down,” he suggests, because that hand is heading places and his jeans are starting to feel tight and this has escalated very quickly.

Ahkmenrah just gives him this _look._

“Or we could keep up the pace,” he suggests, and then the pharaoh starts opening his fly.

“Whoa, whoa, we – there are – dudes right outside! Big guard guys, and, and Teddy’s probably going to come looking-”

Ahkmenrah barks out something in Egyptian, and the jackal guards move, putting their backs to the tomb and then settling in front of it, effectively blocking the entrance and keeping their eyes to themselves.

“Okay but that wasn’t what I mm-”

He gets cut off with another kiss, sharp and demanding and there are hands and you know what?

He’s just gonna go with it.

~

Ahkmenrah hadn’t thought he’d inherited his father’s penchant for possessiveness, but between their newfound level of physical intimacy, their restored bond of companionship, and the sudden rush of duties both of them are inundated with in light of the new Night Hours program, he finds himself increasingly tempted by thoughts of simply kidnapping Larry for a night and refusing to let him go until morning.

It is the touching, he decides. Hardly anyone ever touches him. Even in life, few had dared to put their hands on the divine personage of the pharaoh, or favoured prince. He had never thought it particularly troublesome, but now, he finds he is almost desperate for every caress, every warm brush of flesh against him, even the innocuous bits of affection that seem to have finally broken through the invisible barrier between them. It is as if he had grown so accustomed to starvation that he never realized the biting pangs in his stomach could be silenced.

He is consoled somewhat by the fact that Larry seems similarly enthralled.

One thing he does, now, is help Ahkmenrah with his bandages, both in the evening and just before dawn. Pleasant aspects of physical contact aside, it also makes the entire process go much faster to have an extra pair of hands. Or it would, if they weren’t so frequently distracted.

Often, he will catch Larry staring at the Name on his chest.

“Did you… have anyone, in Egypt?” Larry asks him, on one of the nights when they are not open to the public.

“No,” he says, truthfully. “I was engaged to a cousin of mine, for the purpose of producing heirs, but she died of illness shortly before my coronation. And then I was killed before a suitable replacement could be agreed upon.”

“And you didn’t have a Name on you back then?”

He shakes his head.

“Even if I had, it’s unlikely they would have been a suitable marriage candidate. My parents were lucky enough to bare one another’s marks and be a suitable match for one another, but that was uncommon.” He drifts back into memories, to the place and time he both longs for and is strangely relieved to be rid of. What he longs for is life, he suspects – but if he could choose a time to live in, he no longer thinks it would be that one.

“So what would’ve happened?” Larry wonders.

He blinks.

“You mean if I had an unsuitable Name?” he asks, and then contemplates the question. “It depends. If the owner was of a noble family, even a lesser one, then I may have been able to convince my advisors that we should marry anyway after my cousin died. Provided she was an unmarried woman capable of bearing heirs, of course. If she was a man or infertile, or already married, I may have moved her into my court. Soulmates often make for trustworthy confidants. Of course, they can also be an easy weakness to exploit, so the wiser course of action, in light of my brother’s ambitions, would have been to completely hide the existence of any Name at all. It’s often safer for both parties that way.” He runs an absent thumb across the ‘L’ on his skin. “Then again, a mark over the heart is considered a sign of destiny. If you had been with me back then, I suspect you would have ended up as my most trusted advisor.”

“Trusted advisor?” Larry asks. “Are we assuming I’m a noble born Egyptian too in this scenario?”

Ahkmenrah pauses. He is not… happy to be reminded of the status of Larry’s ancestors in his kingdom. He had thought little of the plight of slaves in his life. Having spent thousands of years in one cage or another, subsequently, he can’t say that his indifference remains.

“I like to think it wouldn’t matter where you came from. Not to me, at least, and I suspect you could rise above almost anything,” he says. “But I can only speculate.”

Larry nods, and then pauses, giving him a peculiar look.

“Does that mean… I mean, was I your first…?” he shuffles, obviously unsettled, and it takes Ahkmenrah a moment to realize what he’s driving at.

“Ah. No,” he says. “Though I never favoured a partner, there were opportunities for dalliances.”

The man seems to deflate in relief.

“You concern yourself with the most peculiar things,” Ahkmenrah says, fondly, and takes Larry’s face in his hands. Because he can, he tips forward to press a kiss to his lips.

“That’s not a peculiar thing to be concerned about,” Larry mumbles in protest.

“It’s like when you were obsessed with key rings.”

“That was a project! And it’s completely different! There’s not even any similarity there, why would you even bring that up?”

“It’s adorable,” Ahkmenrah informs him, almost entirely for the pleasure of watching the tips of his ears turn red.

“It’s not, it’s totally normal and completely average,” Larry insists. “You just can’t tell because you have a very skewed standard of normalcy from being a king and living in a magical museum.”

He grins, and grasps Larry’s bicep, placing his hand over the letters he knows are there.

“Do you need to be anywhere immediately?” he asks.

“No,” Larry says. “But we are not having sex in the tomb again,” he then claims, nevertheless leaning in for another kiss.

“I suppose we could go to the security office,” Ahkmenrah says.

“We’re not having sex in the security office, either. It’s always too cold in there, the furniture sucks, and Dexter knows how to pick the lock.”

“Then what would you suggest?”

Larry pulls back and looks at him, peculiarly intent for a moment, with that light in his eyes that says he’s had an idea.

“Give me ten minutes,” he requests.

~

Larry manages to catch Sacagawea on his way to the security office.

“Will you and Teddy be okay watching things if Ahkmenrah and I take off for a while?” he asks.

She nods in agreement, a small smile on her face.

“Of course. It should be quiet tonight. Everyone’s focused on rehearsals for tomorrow,” she says.

“Great! Thank you. If anything goes wrong, have Jed and Octavius phone me,” he replies, and then he takes off, gathers a bundle of spare clothes from the office, and hightails it back.

A few minutes later, they’re on the train to Larry’s apartment, while Ahkmenrah curiously observes everything around them. His gaze flits from the advertisements to the people to the windows, his lips curling in distaste at some trash on the ground, then lifting in amusement at some creative graffiti. Larry finds himself alternating between watching his expressions and watching everyone else around them, weirdly jumpy, like some part of his brain thinks an assassin is going to spring out and try to stab the pharaoh at any moment.

It’s a little weird, to be honest. He’s not usually this suspicious.

Maybe it’s just because he knows it’s a risk to take Ahkmenrah so far from the museum, even this early in the evening. Or maybe it’s the way Ahkmenrah’s face goes a little blank whenever they get too crowded, pressed together in the tiny, noisy subway car.

Giving in to temptation, he reaches over and clasps his hand, tangling their fingers together. It earns him a smile.

“Impressive,” Ahkmenrah says, once they reach their stop and get back out on the street. “But I think I prefer to travel aboveground. With fewer people.”

Larry just nods in agreement and decides there’s really no reason for him to let go of his hand.

When they get to the apartment, he can’t deny feeling a certain degree of nervousness. It isn’t a bad place, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not huge or fancy, either. He had Nick this weekend, so there’s some clutter left over from his visit – a few dishes in the sink, game controllers and blankets on the floor.

“This is your home?” Ahkmenrah asks, glancing curiously around.

“Yup,” Larry says, dropping his keys onto the little stand by the door. “The old crash pad. Not much, I know, but it works.”

Ahkmenrah moves to look curiously at several photographs of Nick at various ages, clustered near the television, and then he sees the _other_ set of photos, the ones of tiny cowboys and Roman soldiers and dead presidents and huns, monkeys and lions and even a particular ancient pharaoh, here and there. Erica thinks Larry has started hanging out with a really creative historical re-enactment society.

Once he’s finished with the photos, Ahkmenrah moves on to the kitchen, and then peers curiously into the bathroom. Larry self-consciously stuffs a few stray dirty towels into the closet hamper.

“I wasn’t actually planning on bringing you tonight, or I would have, y’know, made it look nicer,” he says.

“It looks quite nice as it is,” Ahkmenrah assures him. “Bedroom?” he asks, then, and Larry goes tongue-tied. He decides not to even attempt speaking at this point and just sort of gestures helplessly towards the door.

There is something distressingly hypnotic about watching Ahkmenrah, dressed in Larry’s spare clothes, walk into Larry’s bedroom with as much self-assuredness and poise as he ever has. It’s sort of like seeing a lion trying to pass for a housecat. All Larry can do is just kind of stare and be grateful that he habitually makes his bed.

Then Ahkmenrah turns to him and smiles, his expression uncommonly soft.

“Come here,” he says.

Larry goes.

~

“Egypt stuff’s boring,” he overhears a little boy say, during their open Night Hours. “Let’s go find the Civil War guys.”

He glances at Nick, who is happily assisting several miniature railway workers with their attempts to expand their track into the hallway.

“I have thirty foot tall jackal guards,” he says. “How is that boring?”

“Don’t ask me. I think they’re cool,” Nick loyally declares, once again proving his superiority over other children.

“It’s because the Civil War mannequins have guns, isn’t it?” Ahkmenrah nevertheless surmises. “The television was right, young people are _obsessed_ with guns.”

“You sound like my grandpa,” Nick informs him.

Ahkmenrah looks over at the boy.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Nick says, without even bothering to look up. “With your eyes. You know you can’t _actually_ glare people into oblivion, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He takes it back. All children are fickle, troublesome creatures.

With a sigh that sounds about twenty years older than he is, Nick abandons the railway, careful not to displace any miniatures as he rises to his feet.

“Look, if you want kids to get more excited about your display, you’re going to have to be flashier and more exciting,” he says. “As far as they know, you’re just a guy in a costume with some fancy wall decorations and a couple of moving statues. There’s stuff like that all over the place.”

“Don’t they care about antiquity?” Ahkmenrah asks.

“There’s also antiquity all over the place,” Nick points out.

A couple of visitors pass through, then, oo’ing and ahh’ing over the miniatures. With a nod of his head, Nick beckons Ahkmenrah out into the hall, and he follows.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll help you. You’re great at music, you’re great at dancing, we can work with this.”

“Work… how?” he wonders, justifiably cautious.

“Ancient Egypt DJ booth!” Nick declares, a light like his father’s shining in his eyes.

~

Larry stares at the sound equipment that has somehow found its way into the Ancient Egypt display, and he stares at Ahkmenrah, who is intently listening to Nick and staring with laser-like focus at some kind of list in his hands, and he stares at Nick, who’s grinning like the Cheshire cat and waving his arms for emphasis.

Once upon a time, Larry had thought that his son had inherited Erica’s sensible, down-to-earth nature. But apparently, his mad scientist genes just took a few years to kick in.

He just got done coaxing Ook and Ugg down off of the roof (how do they keep getting _up_ there?) and, yeah, there’s no way he’s got the energy to try and figure out what the heck is going on here until he’s had _at least_ a couple of hours to recharge. Ahk and Nick are bonding. Hooray. He turns and head back the way he came, hoping they’ll remember to clean up before dawn.

“Lawrence! Just the man I wanted to see!” Teddy calls out to him.

“Oh, hey,” he replies. “Where’s Texas?”

“Helping the huns with a demonstration,” Teddy replies. “Lawrence, may we speak? In private? I have a request to make.”

“Sure, sure,” he readily agrees, and they duck into the elevator, which is fortunately empty.

Unfortunately, when they get inside, Teddy seems to stall.

“What’s up?” he prods.

“I wish to request an outing of a somewhat delicate nature,” Teddy admits. After Larry started taking Ahkmenrah to his apartment, on occasion, a few of the other museum exhibits had begun making noises about leaving every now and then, too. Obviously, it wasn’t an option for most of them. But with the right clothes and some careful chaperoning, plenty of the models and mannequins could easily walk down the street without seeming too out of place. With the new Night Hours program the ‘live actors’ were even drawing paychecks. Larry pooled the money into a communal pot that paid for things like clothes, gadgets, and other diversions that the exhibits were interested in, and it was usually a pretty healthy stockpile, all things considered.

He always had to go with someone on an outing, for obvious reasons, and they were carefully planned to make sure there were always plenty of allowances for time, traffic, mishaps, and other inevitable disasters. Teddy and Sacagawea had been on a few. Attila _really_ liked heading out to the movies, and was surprisingly well-behaved about it.

“Delicate how?” he wonders.

“I don’t want Sacagawea to find out about it. Not yet,” he says, and then he takes a deep breath. “I need to purchase a ring.”

It takes Larry a second to clue in.

“You’re – you want to propose?” he asks, stunned.

Teddy stares at the elevator floor.

“It would be more symbolic than anything else,” he says. “There are no legalities to worry about, and the spiritual factor hardly needs any underlining at this point, but… it’s the next step for us, I believe.”

Larry recovers from his surprise, and claps Teddy on the shoulder, smiling from ear to ear.

“Congratulations!” he says, as the elevator dings open.

“Oh, don’t congratulate me yet, Lawrence. It’s not a success unless she accepts,” Teddy says, but he’s smiling. “I want to pick out the ring myself, though. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do,” Larry assures him. “Of course! I’ll see what kind of places I can find that’ll be open in range, okay? And I’ll try and whip up a distraction so she won’t find out about it until you want her to.”

“Thank you, my friend.” Teddy clasps his hand, eyes bright.

 _Holy crap,_ Larry thinks. _Marriage._

~

On a weekend when the museum is closed for repairs to the roof, Teddy Roosevelt and Sacagawea tie the knot, in an informal ceremony in the museum’s lobby and brand new dining area.

Ahkmenrah officiates. As the owner of the tablet and a monarch, of sorts, he is agreed to be the best choice, given their unusual circumstances. It seems an odd ceremony to him, not like the weddings he recalls, but nowhere near the overwrought affair of movies and television, either. Rings and promises are swiftly exchanged, Ahkmenrah pronounces the pair husband and wife, and the exhibits break almost immediately into cheers and celebrations.

“Man,” Larry says, as the Neanderthals race off with what appears to be a full keg of beer. “I’m glad I’ll have the better part of tomorrow to clean all this stuff up.”

“Relax, Larry,” Ahkmenrah advises. “It’s a celebration. Don’t worry about the cleaning up until afterwards. If you need help, there’s always tomorrow night.”

“True,” Larry agrees, smiling.

The revelry is quite intense, though the main stars of the celebration seem more content to quietly enjoy one another’s company than to shout their love to the heavens. Teddy does got dragged onto some Viking shoulders at one point, and Sacagawea manages to get drunk and start babbling in her native tongue, but the most raucous partying seems to occur simply for the sake of the opportunity. Ahkmenrah and Nick provide the music, until Larry deems it ‘too rowdy’ for Nick to remain, and leaves, briefly, to take him home.

 _“So,”_ Attila says in his language, approaching him while his men encourage a Civil War soldier who is attempting to get drunk. No small feat, without a mouth. _“When will our next wedding be?”_

Ahkmenrah blinks at him.

 _“I’m not sure I could say,”_ he replies. _“General Octavius’ courtship is taking its time, and Columbus still seems to be having difficulty convincing the Easter Island Head that his love is pure and true.”_

Attila laughs.

_“Columbus? And the big head? No, no, no. What about you and our night guard?”_

_“You’re just looking for an excuse to throw another party,”_ Ahkmenrah accuses.

_“Maybe a little. Still! You should get married! Everyone knows whose Name is on you.”_

The price he pays for Egyptian fashions.

_“Larry’s already been married once. I doubt he’s eager to repeat the experience.”_

Attila makes a derisive sound and waves a hand through the air. Whatever his response would have been, he’s cut off when Dexter and several of the Neanderthals begin tossing confetti down on everyone from the balcony. Unfortunately, their grasp of the concept appears tenuous, at best, as they also toss the buckets _containing_ the confetti down, too. Several loud crashes and cries of outrage ensue.

“Alright, enough!” Ahkmenrah exclaims, after dodging a plastic barrel lid. He starts heading up. “Dexter! No tossing heavy objects from the balcony! That is the third rule on the list. Just because Larry isn’t here doesn’t mean things get to devolve into total anarchy.”

The tiny capuchin at least has the grace to look apologetic.

Ahkmenrah’s starting to think that Larry might have a point when he says Dexter’s evil.

~

Larry takes Nick for a check-up at the dentist, and finds himself flipping through a wedding magazine while he waits.

When he and Erica got married, her parents had paid for most of it. And they’d had final say on pretty much everything, from the venue to the decorations to the flavour of cake. Larry, young, poor, and eager to get into their good graces, hadn’t put up much in the way of a fight. As for Erica, in hindsight, he kind of thinks that her primary motivation in marrying him had been to please her parents anyway – so what was one more concession? They’d spent most of her life fretting over the lack of Name on her, and what it could mean, and whether or not they’d have grandchildren, and if there was something _wrong_ with their daughter. Traditionalists, through and through. They’d been equal parts relieved by Larry – because at least _someone_ wanted to marry Erica – and suspicious of him (because they aren’t soulmates, you know, so who knows why he’s really interested in her).

After the divorce, they’d decided he’d been bad news all along, of course.

Now he could pay for a pretty decent wedding himself. Nothing spectacular, not like some of the stuff in the magazine, but he wonders if it would actually be… doable. Maybe he could even convince the board to let him book the actual museum for the wedding. They could have caterers come, decorations, musicians… or would that seem like he was trying to upstage Teddy and Sacagawea?

Well, he could book another venue, but then only the human-looking exhibits could attend. And it would have to be close by. Plus, who else would he invite? Nick, and Erica and Dom, maybe, although he’d bowed out of going to Erica and Dom’s wedding even though he’d gotten an invitation because no one should really bring that level of awkwardness to someone else’s fresh start. Also, there’d been a better than average chance that Erica’s parents would be there. Anyway, most of Larry’s friends, these days, are the kind who only move around at night.

On the other hand, he doesn’t know a whole lot about Egyptian marriage ceremonies. Maybe Ahkmenrah would want something in specific. They could work with that. Tradition, and all. Provided he would even be interested in saying yes – and Larry’s not actually sure where he might stand on the whole subject.

 _Which is why you generally have to ask the other person before you start planning weddings,_ he tells himself.

~

“Do you ever regret not getting married?” Larry asks him, out of the blue, while they’re in the midst of making sure the tables in the dining area have been set up with enough space to allow the zebras through for tonight’s theatrics.

Ahkmenrah pauses.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t wish death upon my cousin, but I wasn’t precisely looking forward to marrying her, either. She wasn’t terribly… personable.”

“Yeah but, no, what I mean is, do you regret that you missed the opportunity to know it was like? To get married, and all that stuff?” Larry clarifies, measuring out two tables and then moving one a few inches to the left.

“What are we including under the umbrella of ‘all that stuff’?” Ahmenrah wonders, halting in the middle of the room.

Larry shrugs.

“Partnership. Kids. I don’t know, things like that?” he says.

He remembers long nights in his tomb, weeping for the vanished Names on his skin.

“I can’t say I ever dwelt much on the subject while I was alive,” he replies.

“Come on. Don’t do that,” Larry says. “Don’t just shut it down. You thought of something, didn’t you?”

“Perhaps,” he concedes.

There’s an awkward pause.

“Well?” Larry prods. “What was it?”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

Letting out an exasperated breath, Larry clutches at the empty air with his hands for a moment, obviously frustrated. It looks like he’s strangling invisible birds.

“Y’know, sometimes it _helps_ to talk about things,” he says, once he’s finally had enough of that.

“What would it help?” Ahkmenrah asks. He means to sound pragmatic and philosophical, but it comes out bitter and resentful instead. “Should I dwell on all of the things that never happened for me? Which do you think is better for me to focus on, the opportunities I missed while I was alive, or all the things that never changed during the thousands of years I spent waking up in a tomb buried in the desert?”

The silence that spreads in the wake of his question is profound. He looks over at Larry, and Larry’s expression is one of horrified realization.

“You spent thousands of years waking up in your tomb every night,” he whispers, as if he’s only just figured this out. Which, Ahkmenrah supposes, he only just _has_ – it isn’t as though he’s brought the subject up before.

“Larry…”

Larry shakes his head.

“Why would anyone do that to you?” he says. “Who would give you something like the tablet, and then seal you away? How did that even happen?”

“Even the best of intentions can have unforeseen consequences,” he replies. “It doesn’t matter, Larry. It’s done. My nights are much livelier now.”

He smiles, sincerely, but it doesn’t seem to have the reassuring effect he was hoping for.

“I’m sorry,” Larry says, refusing to meet his gaze or, apparently, drop the subject. “All this time, I didn’t… I didn’t even think it all through…”

Ahkmenrah sighs and goes to him. He takes his chin in his hand, forces him to _look._

“You, of all people, should not be apologizing to me,” he says. “To be completely honest, I would rather not dwell on it. It isn’t a subject I can easily put into words.”

Larry searches his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. But if you ever _do_ want to talk about it – any of it – talk to me? Please?”

 _No_ , he thinks. He would prefer not to taint Larry with this sorrow and despair. He would prefer to forget it, if he could, to wash most of those long years from his mind. Though he doubts he ever will, with each night he lives now, they seem a little further away.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, instead.

The subject of marriage doesn’t come up again.

~

Larry is enthralled by the constellations in the planetarium.

“The stars are alive,” he breathes, enchanted by the magic at play in a way he hasn’t been for years.

Beside him, Ahkmenrah looks amazed as well, a gentle glow lighting up his features. His mouth is frozen is a soft ‘o’ of wonder. The others are equally quiet, equally spellbound by what they’re seeing, and it puts it reverent sort of calm throughout the entire museum.

“I didn’t know the tablet could do something like this,” the pharaoh admits in a whisper.

Above them, Orion preens, clearly pleased with all the positive attention.

“We have _got_ to make this a show,” Larry declares, his mouth widening into a grin.

~

Ahkmenrah feels it first in the morning, as he lies in his sarcophagus – a strange prickling of unease, like an itch beneath his skin. It reminds him, vaguely, of what it felt like to get sick back when he was alive.

When he wakes on the night of the constellation show, he knows even before he sees the corrosion that something is _wrong._

~

Larry looks at Dexter, because he can’t bring himself to look at anyone else.

Teddy. Sacagawea. Attila. Jed and Octavius.

Ahkmenrah.

 _No,_ he thinks. _No, no, I’ll give anything, just don’t let this happen. Anything. Please, no. Please._

~

In all his life, Ahkmenrah never once defied his parents.

In his death, he has been only slightly more rebellious.

Spending thousands of years trapped in a tomb with someone will inevitably lead to a few hiccups in the relationship, after all, no matter how much you love them. Even so, he has never been particularly good at defying them. His father is the great Merenkahre, wise and just, a living god. Ahkmenrah’s own kingship had been so short and ignoble by comparison to his father’s rule that after his death, it was like he was a prince again. A boy, perpetually, never permitted to grow up, never entrusted with the fullness of a greater man’s knowledge and wisdom.

It is easy to fall back into that role, in one way, and completely impossible, in another.

He stays with his parents, because that is what he should do. That is what is expected of him. He is the dutiful son, and his father made the tablet so that they might be together. To leave, of his own volition, would be the height of disrespect and ingratitude.

But he does not _want_ to stay.

The London Museum has many wonders to observe. Many new faces to meet. But it feels austere, and alien. Here, he is not ‘the pharaoh’. He is barely ‘Ahkmenrah’.

His is ‘Merenkahre’s son’. In more flattering moments, he is ‘the one who brought the tablet’, but though the display case it is placed in still reads ‘Tablet of Ahkmenrah’, the exhibits refer to it as _Merenkahre’s._

And why should they not? His father has been its true master, all along. He is merely it’s… muse, he supposes.

“You have changed,” his mother notes. She says it sadly, and as if it is a thing that has come upon him suddenly. But it doesn’t feel at all sudden, to him. If feels more as though he has crawled here, slowly, on his belly, through centuries of darkness and miles of freezing sand.

“Yes,” he nevertheless agrees.

“You’re right here beside me. Yet I feel as if you are on the other side of the veil.” She looks towards the far room, where his father is conversing with the new night guard. Tilly. She is much more inclined to humour him than Larry had been.

His mother looks back towards him, once she’s certain that his father is distracted. “What would make you happy, my son?” she asks, in a low voice, as if this conversation is a secret that should be kept between them.

The way she has always asks things, when she thinks his answer will displease his father.

Ahkmenrah thinks of his days as a boy, basking in his parents’ affection and approval, in the esteem of his people. He thinks of the day his father named him as his successor, instead of Kahmunrah, and the rage which twisted his brother’s face. The brief flare of genuine hurt in his eyes, there and gone again so quickly that he has never been entirely certain that it wasn’t a trick of the light. He thinks of dying, and waking in his tomb, and realizing that his father’s lauded tablet hadn’t granted them eternal life after all, but merely a nightly reprieve from death.

He remembers suffocating, in the dark, while his parents sat before the light of the tablet, a pair of silhouettes whispering in the night.

He remembers the secret Names. He remembers the only night he begged his father to turn the tiles before dawn, so that when they lay down that night, they would not awaken again.

“Let me die!” he pleaded with his parents, the night the third Name vanished from him. “Let me die, I cannot do this for one more night, I _cannot!”_

But they had refused him, and for years afterwards he had sat in that tomb, quiet and still, like a dream, listening to his mother’s lullabies, his father’s words – faltering, for the first and last time in his memory.

“There is always a price, Ahkmenrah,” he said. “Even without the magic, we will not find eternal rest yet. We are bound to it, now. But at least we are together.”

Together. Together. His parents had wanted to be with him, always, and he had never had any say in that. How could he? To deny them would be to deny their love, it would make him the worst kind of child. But he is more than just their child.

He remembers Cambridge. He remembers being quiet, and still, fearing what the men who had taken him would do if they discovered the magic of the tablet. He remembers listening to them speak, wondering where his parents were, wondering when they would take the tablet and not come back, melt for the gold or sell it off as a curiosity, and the night would finally come that he would not awaken.

He remembers fifty four years of screaming in a box.

He remembers light, and sound, and air, and finally being able to _move_. He remembers reading a Name on his chest and being able to look over and actually see the face it belonged to, of living in a sea of light and sound and boisterous laughter. A taste of real life again. Perhaps the first taste of any kind of life that he could actually claim for himself, even if the gods still demanded to have their say now and then.

“I want to go home,” he whispers.

“As do I,” his mother replies, but he can tell – she misunderstands. She thinks he means Egypt. She thinks he means sand and monuments and power and prestige.

Ahkmenrah bows and excuses himself from her presence. He needs to walk.

He needs to think.

~

Larry almost buys a plane ticket to London a dozen times over.

He stops himself every time.

Once, Ahkmenrah had done his best to let Larry go, and make a choice about the kind of life he wanted to lead.

He has to give him the same chance.

But he makes sure the night guard at the London Museum always knows how to get in contact with him.

Just in case.

 


End file.
